Traditionally, reading comprehension is taught using a first approach, a second approach or a combination of the two approaches. The first approach is not reading comprehension, per se, but instruction in basic, related skills that enable comprehension to take place. For example, to understand a passage it is necessary to decode the words effortlessly (so that attention isn't diverted from comprehension), read fluently (that is, recognize the words in text quickly, accurately, and to translate them into prosodic units as opposed to words), and know the meanings of the words. It is clearly proven that improving word recognition, decoding, reading fluency, and vocabulary knowledge all have a positive impact on reading comprehension itself.
The other approach is what is usually referred to as comprehension strategies instruction. Comprehension strategies instruction explicitly provides students with approaches to thinking during reading that have been found to improve reading comprehension, at least with low reading comprehension level readers. Some of the strategies that have been successful include teaching students to summarize text, to engage their prior knowledge before reading, to question the text, to translate the text information into graphic form, to use story maps (to summarize narrative text), and to monitor understanding. These strategies are not skills-based instruction (see below), nor are they teaching activities, but rather they are activities that readers are supposed to carry out during their reading on an independent basis. Most programs emphasize the teaching of strategies as the major or sole focus of direct reading comprehension instruction. These approaches do not, however address the more basic underlying problems of a poor reader and thus it is desirable to provide a reading comprehension system that addresses this limitation of the typical approaches and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.